My problem is the opposite, normal teeth, small mouth! Haven’t ever been able to have braces until now, so I’m knocking it all out now. Hope everything goes well for you!

This. I’ve only been recently able to afford much needed dental care, and now it’s too late for one of my teeth, a tooth above it broke the roots because my mouth is too crowded. Had I been able to afford it earlier, I would have a much more normal mouth.

Decentralization is an extremist position, to be fair.

Why does the market reward anti-consumer companies like Apppe, that use their dominant market share to intentionally sabotage their own products to make people buy more?

For example, why does Apple fight against Right to Repair? Is it for the consumer, or is it for profit?

The market isn’t supposed to select for the best products for consumers, but the most profit, period. That’s why medicine is marked up skyward, because customers cannot not buy medicine.

How do you account for the vast amount of anti-CPC Communists, Socialists, and Anarchists, if this “influence from a hostile government” is so effective? Might it be simpler to see that Capitalism’s increasing failure has driven more people in developed countries towards radicalization, especially as generations are further removed from the Red Scare?

Sure, if you stay out of the broader Lemmy and stick to niche subs, you’ll likely see more people that go to those niche subs. It’s not that you can’t find Communists or Anarchists on Reddit, they just tend to stick to their subs, while on Lemmy Communists and Anarchists are dominant in the bigger subs.

Believe me, it’s very noticeable. Perhaps you conflate liberals with Communists and Anarchists?

No, I think we disagree here. Pure Communism is a good thing, it just takes time to build it. What the USSR had was a flawed version of Marxism-Leninism, which even if replicated today would not have the same set of issues it faced uniquely due to civil war, WWII, and Stalin. I don’t want a recreation of the USSR either, but I do want Communism as the end goal.

The Free Market is a sham and the profit motive results in stagnation, consumerism, Imperialism, and a lack of choice. Competition is only a good thing in the context of Capitalism and Markets. Social Safety Nets are not Worker Ownership of the Means of Production.

What you’re advocating for is Social Democracy, which is well and good compared to most Capitalist systems, but is straight up inferior to actual Socialism, as essentially its Capitalism but with band-aids.

Maybe if this was Reddit, but on Lemmy there are vast numbers of Communists and Socialists, not just Social Democrats who want Capitalism with band-aids. The founder is a Communist, and decentralization is core to leftist ideologies.

Marxist-Leninist. To simplify, Marx wrote some stuff, Lenin expanded on it and threw a revolution, shortly after which he fucking died. Stalin wrote a couple more sentences then distilled the ideology of Marxism-Leninism. That’s why you have non-Marxist-Leninist Marxists/Leninists like the ICP, as word-salady as that sounds.

The essential factor is the belief in the use of a Vanguard Party to carry out a revolution and build up a Socialist state to whither into Communism.

How would one take advantage of Communism for personal gain in a way that goes against Communism? Have you legitimately thought beyond pure vibes in your head?

How does one “easily seize power” in a democratically controlled system, moreso than a top-down oriented one like Capitalism?

Decentralization appeals to leftists, and the founder of Lemmy is a vocal Communist. As such, there are lots of leftists of various flavors, be they Marxist or Anarchist.

Couple things here: Communism is Socialism, a form of it. Communism has never been “implemented” either, as it’s specifically a post-Socialist stage. The ML states you’re referring to were Socialist, and didn’t reach Communism.

Secondly, the ML states were ML states, and as such were deliberately adapting new theory proposed by Lenin and distilled by Stalin.

I’m in no way a Stalinist, or a simp for the USSR, your comment is just wrong.

By your very same logical chain, Capitalism is an ideology 400 years old that failed miserably every time, as well as Socialism. It’s meaningless word salad.

Oh I agree, one fully unified, decentralized “government” would be best, organized bottom-up.

Competition, sure. Sports, competitive cooperation, and other methods can be had. Market competition would not exist.

I could be saying the same thing you’re saying though, so correct me if I’m misunderstanding please.

I think your biggest issue is that you’re comparing a developing country that was severely underdeveloped before the USSR rose with a developed economy, as though they can be meaningfully compared. If your metrics for thriving consists of looking at people’s access to luxury commodities in a country that saw the bulk of the fighting in WWII, was founded in a Civil War during WWI, and was a backwater, feudal landscape that hadn’t even reached full Capitalism yet, then I’m afraid you aren’t being honest.

Let this be clear: I am not a Stalinist, nor am I saying the USSR was “good.” However, my point is that even in the USSR, the principles of Socialism are so sound that it dramatically improved people’s lives over what came before, and since becoming Capitalist, wealth inequality skyrocketed and life expectancy sharply dropped until the last decade.

As for control over their lives, the citizens of the USSR in many ways had more freedoms, and in many ways less freedoms. They couldn’t go against the party in any meaningful way, but the Soviet Democracy meant that they generally had more local control than workers in Capitalist workplaces. I would personally like to have the best of both worlds, more democracy, without top-down Capitalism.

Edit: as an example for the last point, George Lucas famously said that he was jealous of filmmakers’ freedoms in the USSR, as he claimed that creating movies for profit was even more constricting than not being able to criticize the Communist Party.

Socialism in the traditional Marxist path is a transitional step to Communism, yes. Communism, however, is fully anti-market, and as such is anti-competition. Communism is a Stateless, Classless, Moneyless society, perhaps you meant to say a system like Market Socialism should precede Communism, rather than some impossible form of competitive Communism?

Couple things, here.

1. Define “thriving,” even the most famously abusive Socialist economies like the USSR managed to double life expectancy, and achieve other good metrics like free Healthcare and education, which even modern Capitalist economies struggle with.

2. “Capitalism” did not make everyone’s lives better. Development did. That’s why the USSR, in spite of its top-down, brutal structure, managed to double life expectancy.

3. Simple “blind brand loyalty” and monopolization are not the only hallmarks of “Late-Stage Capitalism.” Other hallmarks include rampant consumerism, bullshit jobs, stagnating wages with respect to productivity, further alienation from labor, increased Imperialism, and more.

4. Blind brand loyalty isn’t the issue here, and you cannot “fix” Capitalist exploitation within Capitalism, only make it more bearable.

All in all, lots of assumptions with no ground to stand on. As a leftist, I think it’s safe to say that democracy is generally a good thing, as is decentralization, so a better system than top-down Capitalism would be an economy with democratic participation from the bottom-up. Communism can achieve this.

I’d argue that the people who think Socialism can only work with abundance, even Communism, fail to understand that Socialism and Communism must be built over a long time, and imagine concepts like “from each according to his ability, to each according to his needs” must be applied to a pre-existing Capitalist economy.

Really, they just don’t see the timescale. There’s no meaningful reason Socialism cannot happen today with current productive forces.

…do you think Russia is still Socialist? The Russian oligarchs are Billionaire Capitalists.

The USSR collapsed in the 90s, buddy.